White Bean, Spinach & Kielbasa Soup

When I first saw this recipe come across my facebook feed shared by my niece from food blogger It's My Side of Life, I started salivating into my cell phone and knew right away that it would soon be apart of one of our meals SOON.  So here we are on a rainy Eastern North Carolina night and a busy one in our household with therapy in one direction and karate in another after school and the third child who will most certainly have homework to do.  So I needed a meal that would be mostly ready to put to the table and I thought of this amazing looking soup and pulled all the ingredients from the pantry and freezer which I had purchased last week during our grocery shop for just such a night.

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So while we had our busy homeschool day here around the house with our oldest #DJr, I stopped between my lessons to chop some ingredients, open some cans, fry some kielbasa in the skillet and throw it all into the crockpot to fill the house its beautiful aroma all day long and be ready to fill our belly's with yummo feelings after a busy day apart from one another.

Here are the ingredients from Melanie's original blog post:

3/4 pound kielbasa (turkey or chicken work great if you don’t’ want to use beef!)
2 cups chicken broth (vegetable broth works great in a pinch as well!)
2 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups Cannellini beans (you can use canned if needed make sure you rinse them as well)* see my suggestion above if using dry beans
Two medium sized tomatoes diced up really small, it should come to about 1 cup or more
6 cups baby spinach leaves
Freshly cracked pepper to taste

For our family I made a few alterations, we feed a family of 7 so I used a full 1 lb. of kielbasa to start with which is a full size link.  In addition I used 4 cups of chicken broth because I used canned spinach  (2)and as a result the soup was very thick and so I thinned it out with additional broth.  Finally, I did not have any oregano on hand so I omitted this spice all together. If I had my ruthers and I had the availability of fresh ingredients I would opt for fresh spinach all the way although canned or frozen spinach is not a bad option in a pinch.

The kielbasa, tomatoes and garlic were the only things that needed chopping and so fixing this truly was very simple, especially the crockpot method, just put all of your ingredients into the crockpot on medium-high for 4 hours and you will have a delicious pot of soup to place at the table before your family.  We served ours with a pan of cornbread, which my father loved dipping into his soup.

Enjoy!

Nutritional info put into My Fitness Pal:
(I am not sure of how accurate this is when others compare at 221 calories)
Calories for 8 servings: 178 per serving
Total Fat:  12.0g
Total Carb:  7.7g
Protein:  12.6

*I scanned cans and chicken broth containers,